Waking up one morning and realizing you like Journey is one of the worst things that can happen to a person. I should know—it happened to me. One day, I hated Journey like I’d hated Journey for literally over four decades. So how was it I found myself clutching a copy of the band’s 1978 LP Infinity to my bosom and saying, “I love you, Journey, don’t ever leave me, please somebody kill me”?
It was horrible. Journey represented everything I despised—late-Seventies/early eighties MOR commercial rock I couldn’t even laugh at, the way I could, say, their San Francisco compatriots, Starship. They weren’t the punch line to a joke—they were simply one of those bands whose songs you can’t turn off fast enough when they come on the car radio. And yet here I was, heart in my throat every time I heard “Wheel in the Sky.”
The whole turn of events was a cosmic jest at my expense, and who could be responsible but God himself? If so, this was some Old Testament-level shit. God took everything from Job, but at least he spared the poor fuck the indignity of becoming a Journey fan.
Then I found myself wondering if the cause wasn’t closer to home—literally. Shortly before I woke up a Journey fan, I’d purchased a Journey tour poster as a purely ironic gesture and hung it on my wall. It was for a gig at the Offenbach Stadthalle during their Departure to Europe World Tour ‘80.
It was one confusing name for a tour, but that’s not the point. What I was forced to ask myself was, had that poster cast some kind of sinister voodoo spell on me? Literally infected me with a Journey virus? Had I inexplicably purchased a CURSED JOURNEY POSTER?
If so, the joke was on me, and the joke wasn’t funny because there I was, literally wallowing in shame, and there was no one I could tell who wouldn’t shower me in derision, including my family physician and psychiatrist. Telling my friends was, of course, out of the question. Blanket social ostracism is not a good look on anybody.
Journey has never gotten any respect from god-fearing hipsters, people who pride themselves on their good taste, and they didn’t get any respect from Robert Christgau either. Of their 1983 LP Frontiers, he wrote, “Just a reminder, for all who believe the jig is really up this time, of how much worse things might be: this top ten album could be outselling Pyromania, or Flashdance, or even Thriller.”
Hell, even Chuck Eddy—whose criteria for inclusion in his book Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe are so lax they made possible the inclusion of Teena Marie (at the No. 9 spot no less!), the Vision Quest soundtrack, the Jimmy Castor Bunch, Pat Benatar and some band from France of all places—declined to include Journey, despite the fact that Infinity alone includes a couple of songs that rock shockingly hard.
But you know what? Fuck it. I’m tired of hiding, tired of living in shame, tired of living a lie. I’m coming out of the closet, and I’m coming out proud! And shouting to the rooftops, “Yes, I love Journey! Yes, I love Rock Canary Steve Perry and the keister-booting guitar of Neal Schon and the drums of the undeniably great Aynsley Dunbar and the keyboards and bass of the other two guys, whoever they are! And I love the stacked vocals too! I ESPECIALLY love the stacked vocals!”
And as a proud Journey fan let me just say this—there are legitimate reasons not just to admire the music on 1978’s Infinity but also to look up to such songs not to be found on the album such as “Don’t Stop Believin’” (so great it looms large in the final episode of The Sopranos), “Any Way You Want It” (see Caddyshack and Better Call Saul), “Who’s Crying Now” (it’s soft rock gold!) and “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” (which was covered by, who cares, the Dream Theater!).
To listen to Infinity, even if you’re like most people and the very thought of listening to Infinity is right up there with sticking your head in a wood chipper, is to realize Journey isn’t the band you thought it was. They’re not just Steve “The Voice” Perry, whose vocals are so “pop” they rankled the fans of the “progressive rock” Journey he joined for Infinity (by which time the band had released three previous albums). Or the ballads that get shit on so much. Or even the watered-down hard rock the band turned to pure platinum. They can rock you like a hurricane, which is a song by somebody or other, even if they sometimes do so in songs that are otherwise wimp fests.
I know you don’t believe me. In fact, I can hear you blowing the swig of Bud Light you just took out of your nose. But let me just ask you this: if you’re such a badass, bucko, what are you doing drinking Bud Light in the first place? It’s the Journey of beers!
Infinity has several of the Journey songs everybody knows, and most people hate on it, starting with the much-loathed “Lights,” a ballad that puts The Voice front and center. Perry’s lonely and wants to get back to “his city by the Bay,” and he’s joined by the aforementioned stacked vocals beginning in the second verse. Schon plays a come-on-all-you-haters-it’s-killer guitar solo, and despite years of turning blue in the face merely thinking about the guy, I’ve finally come around to admitting that Perry is one top-notch blue-eyed pseudo-soul singer.
“Feeling That Way” opens with some very Elton John piano by Greg Rolie, who takes on lead vocal duties to begin the song. Then the band kicks in with some power chords, Perry takes the mic, and the duo proceeds to pass said mic back and forth; that is when they’re not singing together. But it’s Perry who gets excitable as the band grinds things out, after which Schon plays another fiery ax solo. This one’s mid-tempo rock bliss, especially when the song reaches a crescendo with the whole bunch repeating, “Feeling that way.” The whole song has that air-brushed-to-a-fine-sheen production that makes me think of Boston. Boston, I’ve always liked, and I’ve never been afraid to admit it. Which tells you something about Journey.
And I love how the final “Feeling that way” segues immediately into the stacked a Capella vocals (“Oooh ooh any time that you want me,” pause, “Oooh oh any time that you need me”) that open “Anytime.” Then Dunbar comes in on skins, followed by a big guitar riff. The voices of Rolie and Perry mesh perfectly, then Rolie sings the verse, and we’re back to that killer chorus. Perry finally enters triumphantly on the bridge, which is followed by a real champion of a guitar solo. But what wins me over in the end is the way they repeat the chorus over and over while Dunbar shows off on drums and Schon plays a real fastball of a guitar solo. It’s all very urgent and cathartic, and I’m singing right along, and the shame is almost too much to bear.
“Lă Do Dā” has an anything but promising title (unless it was a Trio song, which it isn’t), but the music’s a real shocker. Schon comes on like a freight train being driven by Jimmy Page, while Dunbar gives the whole thing a staccato feel by smashing the drums every other second or so before Schon turns his guitar into a fusion instrument and proceeds to wail. It’s all very high-tech, state-of-the-art studio cool, the kind of thing I should hate but don’t. And that’s all in the first thirty seconds. Then Perry comes in tonsils blazing, and have I mentioned that the song is “Immigrant Song” fast? And that Dunbar sets his drums on fire? Or that the Schon solo, which also blazes, is followed by Perry singing that dumb title? Or that Dunbar’s drums, which are drenched in effects, take the whole thing out?
“Patiently” is a power ballad of the sort even I can’t defend. Perry sings his heart out over an acoustic guitar, then Schon swaps the acoustic out for an electric, and you get more Perry and a guitar solo so laden with effects you think the band somehow got their hands on alien technology until the song goes back to the beginning, and that’s that. I may have because I’m a Journey fan, but there is some shit even I won’t eat.
But you (or perhaps I should say I) don’t have time to ponder the horrors of “Patiently” because it’s followed by “Wheel in the Sky,” the best song Journey will ever produce. It’s so great that Killdozer makes fun of it by name in their song “The Pig Was Cool,” which is not as cool as Killdozer actually COVERING IT (which they should have), but is still one of the highest honors anyone can bestow on a song.
It’s a powerhouse number with Perry hitting notes so high they’re actually in another galaxy while Schon grinds out this super-cool riff and the rhythm section churns and churns. There’s some deep philosophy in the Great American Baby Prog Tradition, with the wheel in the sky turning while Perry says he doesn’t know where he’ll be tomorrow when he knows damn well he’ll be in his home office checking his stock portfolio. Meanwhile, Schon wails and wails, the backing vocalists do their thing, and I’m not sure what the wheel in the sky is (a giant roulette wheel? A spinning pizza?), but it doesn’t matter; I’m betting no one in the band knows what it is either.
“Something to Hide” is better than it has any right to be—Perry emotes over some musical mush, and so what you think, although you have to hand it to Perry: his voice, love it or hate it, really is one in a million. And so it goes until the song takes off Styx-style and Schon delivers on a real technologically advanced guitar solo, and the group collectively goes “Oooooooohhhhh.” Then Perry returns sounding more impassioned and high-pitched than ever as Schon pulverizes the melody until Perry scales Mt. Everest with HIS MOUTH, and boy is it impressive.
“Winds of March” is scary, not good; it opens with a too-long-by-as-many-seconds-as-it-lasts (forty-seven, to be exact) Renaissance Faire-school workout, then Perry comes in singing “I covered you with roses” and can merkins and Pentangle’s “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme” be far behind? Perry goes on and on, all treacle and starry-eyed emotion, singing things like “You are my child/You make my lifetime big and bright,” and not even the chorus, which is too much like the verse for its own good, can save it. Nor can Schon and Rolie, who finally come in and play some rock and roll. Schon, talk about your wastes, plays his best, most frenetic guitar solo on the album, and you realize the only thing that might have saved the day would have been to ditch the song and use the organ and guitar solos in another, better song.
“Can Do” is cool, the closest Journey would ever come to Guns N’ Roses, by which I mean it’s hair metal, bandsaw-guitar, power-chord happy and moves like it’s being welcomed to the jungle by some apex predator or other. And if the vocals aren’t Axl Rose badass (and they’re not), they’re at least as frenetic as the boys can make ‘em, which hardly takes them out of the wimp category. That said, I LIKE the group vocals almost as much as I like Schon’s no-holds-barred guitar solo, and the way Dunbar inflicts grievous bodily harm on the drums like they just insulted his dear old mum. The big bus crash ending is cool, too.
“Opened the Door” is all delicate drum work (the opening has Dunbar sounding like he’s shaking aluminum foil—for a good half-minute or so), piano, and Perry’s heartfelt vocals, and very pop atmospheric. When Schon comes in briefly, his guitar has atomic swoop and zoom, and the group vocals are drenched in effects. And the vaguely Middle Eastern guitar solo that follows sounds as much a work of studio technology as the vocals. Not much happens, besides the great guitar solo, but it’s anything but a desperate cry for radio play, and I applaud the band for that.
I’m not prepared to say you mock Journey at your own peril because millions of people have mocked Journey their entire lives without anything horrible happening to them. What I am prepared to say is your mockery may not save you from my awful fate. The 18th-century “Shouting Methodist” Charles Wesley wrote of fools coming to mock “but remaining to pray.” His words seem pertinent to my sad case. There’s no guarantee the same won’t happen to you. Prayer could help.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B+
